A referendum in Martinez will let the voters decide whether the City Council vote to change Pine Meadow from permanent open space/recreation to housing will stand. The Council voted 4-1 on Jan. 21 to turn this 26 acres into a 99-house development.

Pine Meadow was designated permanent open space/recreation in 1973 after the owner asked to have the land annexed to Martinez in 1970.

This designation followed a multi-year study period involving the entire community and has remained that ever since.

Changing our open space to housing is too important an issue for four people on the City Council to decide.

That is what the referendum is about. More than 3,900 citizens have agreed that this issue should be put on the ballot for us to vote on, including the many concerned citizens from every corner of Martinez who worked on the Pine Meadow issue over the last two years.

Martinez residents are deeply concerned about our open space and parkland. We place a high value them. The City Council does not seem to share that concern.

They voted to turn one open space (Freitas) into housing and were stopped by citizen action. They rezoned 2 acres of open space and acreage zoned for five houses into an 81-unit Seeno housing project above Grace Episcopal Church.

They lowered developers fees intended for citywide improvements by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then they said they have no money for open space/parkland. And collected campaign donations from the developers.

They are making developers and landowners wealthy at the expense of Martinez residents’ quality of life and property values.

The mayor has said permanent open space does not mean permanent. He believes we have enough open space/parkland and has voted continually to convert open space into housing.

Yet we have not had a new city-owned park in 20 years. Our population has grown by more than 10 percent since 1990, and Association of Bay Area Government goals are for Martinez to add almost 500 housing units in the next several years.

This referendum gives us all the opportunity to vote and send a clear message to the mayor and council that Martinez citizens want and deserve to have our open space/parkland protected, including Pine Meadow.

Your vote will tell them to work with us citizens to find a Pine Meadow solution that satisfies both Martinez residents and the owners.

The public will is there We need our mayor and City Council to step up and help make it happen.

Our proposal for Pine Meadow Open Space/Park could be a template. We propose an open space/park/recreation facility use honoring the Coward family connection with the land, including: retaining the property contours, nurturing the native trees, maintaining the pond, keeping the clubhouse intact, and naming features/sites and placing historic plaques memorializing the Coward family connection to Pine Meadow.

Our discussion of options to buy the property could help provide a short-term infusion of funds and provide a long-term solution for the balance.

The council recently allocated much of the $4.2 million in unallocated public funds we identified for short-term funding. But some remains, and those funds are designed for emergency uses like this, when the land could be lost forever if we do not act.

Long-term funding options are bolstered by our neighborhood survey of 356 homes in which 90.4 percent of the respondents preferred a ” … park bought from the owner with open space, park and recreation uses.”

Of those, 68.9 percent would accept some increase in property taxes to help fund it.

Thousands of residents throughout Martinez are sincerely concerned about Pine Meadow and want to protect our open space. We ask our City Council to join us.

This opportunity will be lost forever unless we vote to keep Pine Meadow as permanent open space/recreation and persuade our City Council to help find an equitable way to buy it from the owners.

Tim Platt is a resident of Martinez who served on the Martinez Parking Place Commission, and has been a founding board member of local nonprofit organizations, including Main Street Martinez and Friends of the Franklin Hills.